Are Mobile Phones Ruining the Environment?

There are a lot of people on our planet. 7 billion in fact. On the day of writing this, there are approximately 7,427,750,156 people living on Earth today, and that number is rising as you read this.

But you know what there are more of?

Mobile devices.

There are around 7.8 billion connected mobile devices on this planet right now. And there are even more if you include devices no longer in use.

Pretty cool, right?

Well, maybe not so ‘cool’ at all.

Mobile devices are part of the man-made system that is speeding up climate change. They are responsible for consuming 142,350,000,000 kWh of electricity per year, as well as millions of tons of raw materials. And there are even more staggering figures for the way we treat used mobile devices. Take a look below.

This wastage is staggering.

Now, there is no doubt that mobile devices have become increasingly useful and they are now essential in everyday life for most of the world’s population. We are at a stage now where we cannot combat this problem by limiting the usage of mobiles.

But we cannot continue to waste used devices at the rate we are, if we want to protect the environment. We are putting terrible chemicals into the ground, such as lead when we dump used devices in landfill tips, and into the air, such as CO2 when we burn used devices in incinerators.

And we are missing opportunities to reuse, recycle and refurbish pre-owned devices. We can start to reduce the environmental effects of our used mobiles by: